


Vertigo

by Willofwhisp



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Disabled Character, F/M, Gen, Non-Canon Relationship, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, RP based, disabled writer writes disabled character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 21:33:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11449482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willofwhisp/pseuds/Willofwhisp
Summary: Off balanced, off centered, and afraid Dylis finds herself running only to be led by her faithful guide dog Sarge straight towards a strange blue box and an even stranger man known only as a doctor.  Mystery and adventure awaits.Wrote orignally as a rp with Aleedoono.





	Vertigo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a damsel in distress is not what she seems...

_Run._ came the voice of instinct in her head, insistent, demanding, _Run. Danger. Run. Run._ **Run!** The instinct to run, run from whatever was happening, or about to happen, overwhelmed her, as the sirens of the fire alarm she had pulled in her office sounded around her. She kept her eyes forward forcing herself to focus, as she felt the pull her shepherd, Sarge, guiding her rushing down the hall towards the doors, but none was moving as fast as she was, none with the urgency that seemed to possess her.

The buzz in her ears, a high pitched whine increased in intensity, causing her to stop with a suddenness that caused one person to bump into her back as she reached to clutch the wall. Sarge began to whine, bracing himself in front of her, as her already poor vision began to blur then double, then triple, almost as if someone in control of the camera was shaking, showing three images layered side by side at once, the same images, yet somehow different. Until finally, overwhelmed, in pain, and nauseated, her eyes finally shut down on her, graying out until the world was only a fuzzy monochromatic grey scale of itself. Still instinct urged her onwards and removing the collapsing cane in her pocket, she clucked to Sarge, telling him silently to lead her when she could no longer really see. 

The urge in her to hurry prodded her onwards out the door and into the street beyond. Forcing her to walk faster despite the feeling that she was walking on a ship, despite the fact that the world to her eyes seemed flat and her vision limited to a grey scale. Her co-workers were gathered on the side-walk opposite, but Dylis kept walking, almost jogging, past the building. _Keep going. You got to keep going. Faster, go faster._ Faster, faster, still, she urged Sarge, a whimper in her throat starting as she another unfamiliar noise, almost as if something was thrumming, whizzing. _Turn left!_ **Now!** leaving the sidewalk she was following behind, she stumbled into a ally way, and guided by Sarge, she soon found her way to lean on the right wall. Bracing herself, she vomited, her world still spinning, as the wheezing grew louder, and a single bell sounded somewhere nearby, probably a church sounding the hour. Groaning, she threw up again, as the sensation of dizziness grew worse, and her world grayed out further. Finally, the noise stopped, and feeling marginally better now her stomach was no longer fighting with her head, Dylis was surprised to find, standing in the alley way in which leaned, in the midst of a world of grey was a bright blue police box that definitely wasn't there a moment before. Still despite all sorts of alarm bells going off in her head, she felt strangely reassured by the sight, almost as if help had arrived. Which was a silly idea really. 

The right-hand panel door of the big blue box made a unlocking click and a high wooden creak as it swung inward revealing a tall, youngish, floppy brown-haired man in a red bow-tie and a warm tan tweed jacket stepped through as he tucked a long metal... wand? It was hard to tell, into his inside jacket pocket. He started to turn to lock the door behind him when he stopped mid-turn, apparently noticing her for the first time. 

Jumping slightly, Dylis looked with wide eyes at the man in a bowtie, her eyes narrowing in confusion. It was strange, how in the midst of one her extreme vertigo attacks that caused her to loose all sense of color, depth, and even loosing vision entirely, this man and the blue box behind him were awash in color and solidarity. Almost if he was the only thing still in a crazy world, the box the only thing solid in the midst of sanity, the only stable things in a world that was shattering, _almost as they stood in the eye of the storm_. Shaking her head to clear her vision, she quickly reached in her pocket for her handkerchief to whip her mouth and popped a mint in as well to help her stomach settle. 

"Hello, I'm the Doctor. Is everyone feeling all-right?" the man said with a smile as closed the door to the police box behind him. He something muttered under his breath, "blimey", and took a quick look all around to see that it was just them here, or so it seemed. "How did you end up here?"

Letting her eyes focus on him, the Doctor he said, she gave him a shaky smile. "Doctor, eh?" resting her hand on Sarge who was wagging his tale until his entire body seemed to be shaking, yet another thing strange, Sarge hardly ever was friendly to anyone he didn't know, especially men. "No, Doctor, I'm fine. Really. Been worse." Gesturing towards the building a few blocks away, from which she emerged, where the fire alarm was still sounding. "Probably moved way to fast, trying to get away." Her green eyes widen, however, as she reached to steady herself as the world seemed to shift, shatter, and move. _Danger. Danger. Danger. Get help._ Bracing herself as her vision swirled and the world span, she fought conflicting instincts. The first instinct was to run, run, and run, and then run some more from whatever was coming. The second instinct told her to trust this man, this strangely stable and solid man, who Sarge trusted. Whimpering as the high pitch whine in her ears sounded again **Danger** , she lifted a pained expression towards the Doctor, and whispered, "Please tell me you called for help. We need to get help. Something is wrong. Something's dangerous back there. Please, please tell me you called for help?" 

Blacking out for a moment, Dylis found herself face first in the shirt front of the Doctor, supported by his arms while Sarge quickly supported her from behind the knees while bringing his handle closer to her grip. Blinking, Dylis quickly straigtened, a blush staining her cheeks, listening stunned as Sarge began to 'talk" in that way he had, that particular whine howl growl combination that he usually did when he was fussing at her for leaving him or whenever he had successfully run off a stranger he didn't like. 

The dog mad a small bark for the Doctor's attention, and in his own way started to tell him, "You, good man, you help, help master. She has, these fits, she runs, scared, you help, please, I call help, I call you." Together, they slowly got her standing once more, if heavily leaning on both of them. "Yes, good thing you called then, Rin Tin Tin" The dog made a short whine-growl "... Oh, Sarge is it? Sorry about that." He looked to her, "I'm here to help." He manouvered her lightly so that she was between him and Sarge. "Yes, let's get your Master to a place where she can sit, and we can talk about what's happening." He felt her eyes and he defended himself, "Yes, I'm not just pretending, I can speak Dog." He said, Strangely, she wasn't surprised, shocked maybe, but not surprised that the Doctor seemed to understand that Sarge was worried and trying to get help for her. Even she could pick that much up from her dog's bark. "He say's that you've been having fits and that's he's concerned." 

Shaking her head at the Doctor's remark about talking dog, she forced herself to focus even the world was going wibbly wobbly worse than any fun house. Placing a firm arm around her waist while Sarge supported her on the other side, Dylis could see the slightly worried look in his eyes when the Doctor asked, "Can you walk?" nodding to show that she could, she found herself propelled along feeling strangely steadied by the doctor despite the vertigo that was causing her to slightly shake. 

"Oh there she is! Dylis!", wincing at the sharp tone of Patricia, her trainer and superior, Dylis turned to look over her shoulder. Sure enough, even she could barely see clearly in the midst of the her momentary color-blindness, Dylis could tell Patricia was livid. But apparently, the Doctor was paying her no mind and just kept propelling her along, assisted by a very happy Sarge who never did like Patricia. "Where are you going? There was nothing there! I can't keep covering for you! The boss says ... oh I'll find you later..." Dylis tried to shout back, "Don't…oh," but Patricia had already stomped off. She meant to warn her not to go back in the office. That whatever trouble her instincts had warned her was coming, warning her to get everyone out of the office, was now there, and the building was now dangerous. Slumping, and dejected, she allowed herself to be guided to the dinner where she soon found herself with a cup of tea in her hands sitting across from a very concerned, and if his face was any indication, slightly confused Doctor. "Now, tell me. Why are you running?"

Taking a sip of tea, sighing as her vision began to clear bringing a little bit of color and the ringing in her ears had stopped now that she was away from the building where she was being trained to 'incorporate in the normal world'. She was still slightly dizzy, but as long as she focused on the Doctor, whose appearance had stabilized back to the man in a red bow tie, she found herself strangely steadied and able to focus better. 

"Why I was a I running?" stifling a bitter laugh, she provided the answer that would most likely send this Doctor running as fast as he could the other way,"The very, very short version: I most likely insane. That's what the doctors tell me anyway. Been telling me that for five years, ever since," closing her eyes at a painful memory that she had purposefully blacked out, "Well, let's not get into that. The slightly longer version is that because of everything that's wrong with me." Dylis said taking off the thick lenses that obscured her green eyes, revealing that they were slightly glazed over, the left one clearly unfocused almost as if it were seeing too far away for it to see clearly, while the right was glassed over as if she was drunk. She gestured her hand to include her eyes and her guide dog, "I've learned to listen to my instincts although I'm still believed to be "unstable"."

Taking another sip of tea, she looked back up towards the Doctor, she was surprised to find that there was no fear there, no disbelief, just a look that was almost understanding and for some strange reason, she found herself babbling on, "The long version of why I am insane? Because, well you remember the year of the ghosts, the cybermen? Of course not, never happened, there is no such thing. Which is why I was hospitalized as insane." Dylis shuddering, barely remember that fuzzy years of darkness in the hospital, the pain, despair, the manic voices that still hunted her _Silly dilly, nutty dilly, useless, useless, useless. Sooo weak, won't you give in to us?_ Frowning angrily, she silently told the voices to shut it even as that other voice, that stronger voice, told her silently not to listen to them. 

"I spent two years or three years there that I can't remember now. I was eventually transferred out there and spent almost a year in recovery that I can't remember either. One day I just woke up, weak and wasted in my childhood home, with a doctor knocking on the door with Sarge in hand." frowning again about that year before Sarge, that year she couldn't remember when someone had pulled her out of the darkness in which she had fallen while struggling with the aftermath of the hospital. "Sarge here, well he has been a miracle. Somehow he always seems to understand when I feel something is wrong, and gets me to a safe place or where I can get help. But still, it's like I can tell when things something is wrong or when danger is coming. Like the sense, I need to duck when a ball is thrown my way, or a car swerves on the curb when I can't seen. That's how I know, here," pointing to her heart, "There was something wrong in that building where I was assigned about six months ago. Been feeling for a while, as if there was slightly off about it. But today, it was worse. And I just knew, I had to get out of there, had to get the others out of there. So I did the only thing I could, told Patricia that I smelled smoke and saw fire, lying of course, and ran out the building, pulling the fire alarm as I went. You saw how that went. Nothing was wrong. Nothing was there. Yet I feel like I failed somehow, like I failed to warn them, and now there…and…" Dylis faded off, brushing a stray dark black lock of her hair behind her ear, "So, Doc, am I insane or what?" 

"I have some basic questions," he said after she finished her testimony. "What year is this, where are we, and also, how long have you had Sarge?" He paused for enunciation, shuddering and making a face as he continued, "Oh, and please, call me Doctor, never 'Doc'. It makes my skin crawl." 

Of all the things The Doctor had expected when he popped out of the Tardis responding to a distress signal and an odd reading in a local business district, this young lady was certainly not one of them. The non-earth technology readings were off the charts and he could almost taste the metallic tang near the building where he found this woman that told him that there was something wrong. Yet when he had stepped out of the Tardis and found only a young woman and a dog, both of whom were afraid, he knew he couldn't just pass them by. The Tardis had practically landed in their laps, so to speak, and after a over 900 years of traveling with Old Sexy, he had learned that nothing was concidence when it came to where she chose to land. The Tardis had landed him here, and the distress signal that caused several bells to ring had apparently come from a single ordinary dog, well...whatever was going on here, this girl and her dog where either responsible, party of it, or had accidentally stumbled on to something that put them in danger. Now listening to Dylis, the Doctor's mind was going twenty ways to sentaday. There were too many holes in her testimony and just too many unanswered questions. As rare as it was when he didn't know something, he still did not like not knowing everything or not understanding something. The thing that alarmed him the most was the fact she remembered Canary Wolf, the cyberman, and perhaps even the Daleks, yet no one else did. The there was what she didn't remember...all those years of not remember after remembering something she shouldn't even have knowledge about, well...that could mean nothing or it could mean everything. 

Taking a sip of tea, he broke his gaze downward, looking into his jacket and pulled out a small flat leather wallet, slightly tapping it to his forehead and set it down and slid it towards her. "I want you to open it tell me what you see." It was just a harmless test to see if she was psychic. If she was naturally inclined, trained, or otherwise like an empathic, it would be blank. If not, he put a small joke. On a rare occurrence, since he just now tuned it to his signature, if it was his or any timelords' fault she was psychic, there might be some psychic feedback causing a small headache, not much bigger than one caused by dehydration. He hoped she saw the joke. 

Dylis sighed and quickly put her glasses back on, closing her eyes briefly to hide her silent frustration. With those questions of course the "Doctor" never "Doc, thought her insane. Next he'd probably ask who was the Prime Minister and who was the first queen of bloody England. Next, not waiting for her answers, the doctor tapped a small leather wallet on his forehead and slid across the table clearly determined to sanity another way as well. 

Deciding to tackle the paper first, to get whatever silly test out of the way before she answered his questions, she picked up the wallet. Frowning her forehead creased as she tilted it this way and that. The thing was strange, if she tilted it one way bringing it into focus of her right eye, it was blank. However, if she tilted it to the left bringing it into focus with her weak left eye contained a rather funny if corny joke as well as a license that proclaimed the man across her a Doctor of the Department of Ministry in 1858, a note saying "hello Sweetie", among other nonsensical things. However, if she looked at it with both eyes she saw both possibilities until a red haze covered it and her headache started to return with a vengeance. Putting the wallet down, she looked across to the doctor who was waiting with an odd expression on his face, a mixture of concern, and was it fear there or pity? 

Sitting across from him for a moment, she almost lied to him, and told him that she couldn't see a thing with her vertigo and poor eyesight. But then, Sarge gave a small whine bark growl and laid his head on her lap and her instincts nudged at her. _Trust him. Tell him the truth._ So petting Sarge's head, she decided to do so. "Is it one of those weird tilt-a-things? You know like one of those funny magnets you get a store that if you tilt one way is a scene in the spring and if you tilt it the other way it's the same scene in winter? Because it's both blank one way and contains all sorts of silly messages the other way, and it makes my headache just to look at the thing. As for the rest, we are in Newport, Wales, it's September of 2012, and I got Sarge, oh about a year ago." She resisted the urge to call him, "Doc" again just to get under his skin just because for one moment she thought he would be different, that he would be the one person in the world who wouldn't think she had lost her marbles. 

_All three reactions?!_ The doctor's hooded brows raised in surprise instinctively as he nearly spat his tea. "Forgive my reaction, but before I explain, I need to answer your earlier question." He regained his composure, "No, you are not insane. A survivor of great affliction, yes, but a hop, skip, and a volley away from insane.... I, on the other hand, have been called mad on many occasions." He picked the wallet back up, and presented it, "This is what is called Psychic Paper, never leave home without it. In its more practical appliance, it helps me pretend to be things that are believable to average, non psychic beings. Basically, a tool to have others let me do things and ask questions without bother. Results vary and its usually interesting until they figure out I'm not what their impression of me tells them I am." He stuffed it back into his jacket pocket. " On the off chance someone is psychic, they don't see anything but me being silly with blank piece of paper and I go on to plan b. Now, when I tapped it," he motioned with his fingers this time to his forehead,' "I tuned it for a brief moment. Its great at holding messages and takes some practice and personal energy. You seeing it as both blank and with a message is... amazing. " He ended with a smile, and sipped his tea to keep him from saying anymore on that subject.

 

Dylis' jaw dropped. She couldn't help it. "What, HOLD On for a moment!" Dylis raised her hand, "Physic Paper!" her tone stunned and just a touch angry, "Me seing nothing and something on this, this paper, is _Amazing_? Physic? Me Really?!?" Dylis frowned at him, her mind quickly catching up with everything that had happened, everything that this doctor had said she had met him, and she narrowed her eyes suspiciously at him. "Wait, don't answer that. I have two very important questions for you, And don't you dare lie to me, because according to that thing: you are the Doctor of the department of Ministry 1858, James Smith Time Agent 2020, you have a really corny sense of humor, and someone's "Sweetie.' among other things" Sarge growled whine at her again, clearly detecting her irritation, and she soothed herself by petting him. "Just what kind of Doctor are you, and better yet, who are you? 

_"Ah, there it is, Doctor, you've done it again,"_ he thought to himself, you've upset the human. He set down his tea softly and stood his full six foot, pushing away the chair. "I told you already, I'm the Doctor but more importantly I'm the man who promised to help you, and I am going to keep that promise. You can stay here and be safe." He pulled out his sonic screwdriver, popped the claws open, and side stepped closer to them, looking down to where she sat. "Right now, I am going to that building you were running from in order to investigate. But, if you want to see for yourself what is happening to you, I need you to trust me." He said straight to her eyes, no fidgeting, no smiles, in a relaxed, even, matter-of-fact tone. He didn't hold it for long as a softness to his eyes and a slight grin on his chin grew when he then offered his other hand. 

A menancing voice sounded in Dylis' mind as she considered his serious face for a moment a world of pain, fear, and sadness in her eyes. _Weak, useless, useless, useless, helpless dilly. Just slow him down. Don't go. Stay. Give in. Silly, silly, silly, nutty, weak, Dilly._

But then Sarge whined, a pathetic loving whine, standing up with a shake, placing a sloppy kis*s on the outstretched hand of the Doctor. _He's a good man. Helpful. Kind. Old. Young. He will help. He CAN help. Trust him._ Turning back to Dylis with a slight wag of his tale, Sarge brought the guide bar near Dylis with a happy yip. _Go now. Know._ Yet, for a moment, she hesitated looking at Sarge. But then, she looked up, and saw that soft knowing small on the Doctor's face and she looked at him, really looked at him. 

Tilting her eyes over her glasses, she blinked, and just for a moment, the glassiness and unfocused quality of her eyes disappeared and her eyes cleared: her right eye deepening in color darkeneing slightly, and in the center of her left, a golden ring forming in the center that seemed for a moment to glow. Looking at him, she saw him there, so old, yet so young, a figure with so many faces, standing there with his hand extended with a smile and a promise. But then she blinked, and the change in her eyes was gone as if it never was, her eyes once again glassed over, and pushing her glasses back up and she gave him a small smile. "You've done this before, haven't you?" she said softly. "Standing there, offering the same choice to oh so many people. Come with me: Find the answers, see amazing things, or stay and never know, always with the same promise that no matter what, you'll be safe. A promise that no one…not even you can keep. But there's a difference in your promises, you try. You try, and most of the time you succeed, and you keep your promises even at great cost to yourself. So, I tell you what Doctor, never Doc, I'm going to do something I never do. Especially with a Doctor, I _hate_ Doctors, don't trust them. But I'm going to **Trust** you." 

Placing one hand on Sarge's guide bar and one hand into the Doctor's, she stood with a flash of her blue and orange knee highs paired with black flats beneath her black knee length dress, she stood, steadied by the Doctor on one side and faithful Sarge on the other. Having decided for once to be brave, there was no going back now.


End file.
